# Who is the greatest pioneer of women's aviation?

> Women were flying within a decade of the Wright brothers and were barred from most of it for fifty years after. Rank the ones who forced the door.

*By YPB Team · Published August 31, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/who-is-the-greatest-pioneer-of-womens-aviation*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Amelia Earhart** — score 1000/1000
   Flew the Atlantic solo in 1932 and turned every record into a lecture tour, a book and a clothing line.
2. **Bessie Coleman** — score 846/1000
   Learned French to get the training America refused her, and earned her licence in 1921.
3. **Harriet Quimby** — score 621/1000
   The first American woman to hold a pilot's licence, in 1911, and the first to fly the English Channel.
4. **Valentina Tereshkova** — score 538/1000
   A textile worker and amateur parachutist who became the first woman in space in 1963.
5. **Willa Brown** — score 440/1000
   The first Black woman to earn a commercial licence in the United States and to hold a US officer's commission.
6. **Raymonde de Laroche** — score 323/1000
   The first woman in the world to receive a pilot's licence, in France in 1910.
7. **Amy Johnson** — score 323/1000
   Flew alone from Britain to Australia in 1930 with under a hundred hours in her logbook.
8. **Sally Ride** — score 179/1000
   The first American woman in space, in 1983, after a career as a physicist.
9. **Jacqueline Cochran** — score 179/1000
   Led the Women Airforce Service Pilots in the Second World War and broke the sound barrier in 1953.

Tags: women, all-time, aviation, pilots